BBC faces impartiality row ahead of controversial Sir Brian May badger cull documentary

To read Tim Bonner's letter to Tim Davie ahead of the broadcast of the documentary,  click here.

The BBC faces an impartiality row ahead of a documentary about the culling of badgers presented by animal rights campaigner Sir Brian May.

Sir Brian claimed his documentary, which will be broadcast on BBC 2 on Friday, will 'outrage' viewers and likened its revelations to the Post Office scandal.

But the Countryside Alliance has warned BBC Director General Tim Davie that commissioning the film by Sir Brian, a fierce critic of badger culling who has campaigned against it for decades, is 'fundamentally incompatible' with BBC impartiality rules.

Since 2013, the government has permitted the culling of badgers across certain parts of England. The aim of culling is to control the spread of tuberculosis among cattle (bovine TB) as badgers carry the disease. A recent peer-reviewed scientific analysis of Defra’s badger control policy in England revealed a 56% fall in bovine TB rates.

In a letter to Tim Davie, Tim Bonner, Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, accused the Corporation of allowing a campaigner with 'clearly partisan views' to front a current affairs programme.

Sir Brian appeared to have been commissioned by the BBC 'precisely because of his partisan activism and the profile he has built for himself surrounding it,' he wrote.

'The decision to do so is fundamentally incompatible with the BBC's obligation to be impartial.'

He highlighted how during a 2015 Newsnight debate on hunting, Sir Brian branded pro-hunting campaigners 'a bunch of lying bastards' and that his activism has also included party political campaigning against his perceived opponents.

Mr Bonner also warned the decision also demonstrated a lack of compassion, adding: ‘Aside from the crippling financial strain, Bovine TB outbreaks impose a considerable toll on the mental health of farmers.

‘The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution has described taking calls from farming victims of bovine TB who had experienced such crippling impacts as to drive them to contemplate suicide. They deserve our compassion and our support. They are ill-served by a public broadcaster that is treating them with such disregard.’

This is not the first time the BBC has become embroiled in controversy over its coverage of the badger cull and TB.

In 2016, the Corporation was heavily criticised after providing Jay Tiernan, a convicted militant animal rights activist, airtime twice in one week after the Government approved extension of the cull to seven new areas in England. Mr Tiernan has been arrested and convicted a number of times for offences such as aggravated trespass, criminal damage and fraud.

Speaking to the Mail, Conservative MP Greg Smith said: 'Yet again the BBC is taking an incredibly biased approach to rural affairs and farming matters. This is an insult to every farmer that has had to put down entire herds because of TB.'

He claimed badgers are 'livestock destroying disease carriers' and that bovine TB cases had 'dropped considerably' in cull areas.

Speaking to the Mail ahead of the broadcast at the end of this week, Gareth Wyn Jones, a North Wales hill farmer, who was interviewed as part of May's documentary, said he fears the programme will not be balanced. Seven of his cows were destroyed after TB was detected in November 2022.

'We have heard Brian May speak … he and his team really believe that all of the TB happens on the farm - it is either brought in by other cattle or there is cross contamination with the slurry. So literally blaming the farmer.'

Mr Wyn Jones, 57, a former BBC presenter, told the filmmakers that badgers are also responsible for declining numbers of hedgehogs and ground nesting birds on his farm - but he does not believe this was included in the documentary.

'How is a rock star going to come along and save our farms?'

Fourth generation dairy farmer Steve Evans, 45, recently made the devastating decision to sell his farm in Pembrokeshire, which has been in his family for around 100 years, after 180 of his cows, more than a third of his herd, had to be humanely slaughtered because of TB in the last year.

'It's just a bloody catastrophe,' he said. 'For my own sanity, we had to stop [farming].'

He described the BBC's decision to allow Sir Brian to host such a contentious programme as 'short-sighted', adding. 'It's an extremely one-eyed view.'

For their part, the BBC insist that the documentary hears from 'numerous voices in the debate on badger culling, including farmers'. It added that it adheres to 'strict editorial guidelines on impartiality on this matter'. 

The badger cull formed a central pillar of the Conservative government's efforts to reduce TB in cattle.

Labour pledged in its 2024 manifesto to ‘work with farmers and scientists on measures to eradicate Bovine TB, protecting livelihoods so that we can end the ineffective badger cull’.

The Government’s existing policy of intensive and supplementary control will end by January 2026.